Proposals of distant genetic (genealogical) relationship

In addition to the noncontroversial language families listed here, there have been numerous proposals of remote genealogical connections that attempt to group some of these into even broader, more inclusive groupings. None of these hypotheses are confirmed; some are plausible, while others have essentially been abandoned for lack of sufficient supporting evidence.

More promising proposals of remote kinship include Maya–Mixe-Zoquean, which would join the Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean families into a higher-order, larger family; and Tequistlatecan-Jicaquean, which would group the two small families of Tequistlatecan (Oaxaca, Mexico) and Jicaquean (Honduras) together.

Hypotheses that have essentially been rejected include:

Macro-Mayan, which would group Mayan, Mixe-Zoquean, Totonacan, and Huave.

Aztec-Tanoan, which would join Uto-Aztecan and Kiowa-Tanoan (of the U.S. Southwest and Great Plains).

Mexican Penutian, which would combine several Mesoamerican groups with the large but mostly doubted “Penutian” hypothesis (which itself proposes possible links among several language families of California and the Northwest of North America). There are several versions of “Mexican Penutian”; one would link Mixe-Zoquean, Huave, and controversial “Penutian”; others link all these plus Mayan and Totonacan.

Maya-Chipaya(-Yunga), which proposed a relationship between Mayan and Chipaya-Uru of South America, to which Yunga was also added later.

Tarascan-Quechua, a now-abandoned proposal that suggested Tarascan (Purépecha), an isolate of Mexico, and Quechuan of South America are connected. A proposal also linked “Hokan” and Quechuan, but this is now abandoned.

Hypotheses which have not been rejected but for which there is little support include:

“Hokan,” which originally proposed several language groups of California and then was extended to include other groups, some of them in Middle America. The “Hokan-Siouan” proposal, with a “Hokan-Coahuiltecan” subdivision, included the original Californian “Hokan” families with Seri, Tequistlatecan, and Tlapanec-Subtiaba; others proposed adding Jicaquean as well. Tlapanec-Subtiaba are now known to belong to the Otomanguean family.

Otomanguean-Huave, which grouped the Huave isolate with the Otomanguean family.

The “Amerind” hypothesis, proposed by Joseph Greenberg and now mostly abandoned, included the following subgroups that involved Middle American languages:

The reason these hypotheses have been abandoned is that the individuals who proposed them typically employed methods that are unable to distinguish between inherited linguistic material (real evidence of possible remote kinship) and other explanations for observed similarities. An example of inherited linguistic material can be seen in English hound and German hund ‘dog,’ which are similar because both are inherited from their common ancestor, from the Proto-Germanic root *hund- ‘dog.’ Similarities can also be a result of loanwords (words taken from another language and not inherited directly from the ancestral language; for example, English pork is similar to French porc because English borrowed this word from French, alongside the inherited pig and swine), accidental similarity, onomatopoeia (words that seem similar because both mimic sounds in nature, such as English meow and Finnish miau), and so on.

The Mesoamerican linguistic area

A linguistic area is a geographical region in which the languages share structural traits as a result of contact between the languages of the area. The language families (including language isolates) that make up the Mesoamerican linguistic area are Aztecan (Nahuan, a branch of Uto-Aztecan), Cuitlatec, Huave, Mayan, Mixe-Zoquean, Otomanguean, Tarascan, Tequistlatecan, Totonacan, and Xinkan. The languages of Mesoamerica share several structural features—some shared by all the languages of the area and by some languages beyond the borders of Mesoamerica, some traits shared by several but not all the languages in the area, and five areal traits that are shared by essentially all Mesoamerican languages but not by neighbouring languages beyond this area. These five traits have been considered especially strong evidence for defining this linguistic area. Four of the five traits have essentially the same distribution, clustering at the borders of Mesoamerica.

Relational nouns, locative expressions composed of a noun root and possessive pronoun (usually a suffix or prefix), of the form my-head for ‘on me,’ as in K’iche’ (Mayan) chi-uu-pam lee kaxa ‘in the box,’ (literally ‘at-its-stomach the box’).

Non-verb-final basic word order. Languages in the Mesoamerican linguistic area do not have subject–object–verb (SOV) basic word order. Although Mesoamerica is bounded by languages to both the north and the south that have SOV basic word order, languages within the linguistic area have VOS, VSO, or SVO basic order, not SOV. Mayan, some Mixe-Zoquean languages, Xinkan, and varieties of Nahua all share VOS word order, thought to be borrowed (due to language contact) among them, a relatively rare word order among the world’s languages.

A number of calques (loan translation compounds) are shared by the languages of Mesoamerica. These include, for example, ‘boa’ = ‘deer-snake,’ ‘egg’ = ‘bird-stone’ or ‘bird-bone,’ ‘knee’ = ‘leg-head,’ ‘lime’ = ‘stone(-ash),’ and ‘wrist’ = ‘hand-neck,’ among others.

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